potatoes in containers

I had such a lovely day working outside today. No wind, no rain, a little sun, thank goodness. When it came time to think about dinner, I decided to harvest a pot of potatoes that I planted for winter new potatoes and thought I'd share my year-round new potato growing idea here.
It all started last year when I experimented with planting some Yukon Gold potatoes in a garden bed on labour day weekend. In January the garden was covered with a foot of snow (we had an unusually cold winter on the coast last year) but I was surprised and happy to see that when I moved the snow away and dug through the soil I found a lovely crop of new potatoes ready to be harvested! What a fabulous treat.
That summer I had also experimented with growing potatoes in containers and it worked beautifully. Many of the city-dwelling visitors to the garden went away interested in trying this on their balconies! Below is a 1/2 wine barrel growing Russian Blue potatoes.

This year, I decided I'd try to grow Seiglinde potatoes in containers to help with the production for my weekly veggie harvest basket deliveries and also for our own food throughout the year. Below is a photo of the containers all lined up.

I begin by putting about 2 inches of soil in the bottom of the container. I then set 4 small seed potatoes (or pieces of potatoes that have sprouts on them if they're large to start with) around the edge and 1 in the middle. I cover them with another 2 inches of soil and wait for the seed potato sprouts to grow about 4-6 inches tall. I then add more soil to almost cover the new green growth and let them grow again and then add the last layer of soil to fill the container and give them the maximum room to grow. I plant up the containers at different times throughout the season so I have a constant supply. There are always containers at different stages of growth and this year each container got planted 3 times from late February to early September.
New idea for next year: instead of filling the containers up to the top with soil, I'm going to cover the new growth with grass clippings, old hay, straw.
Here's me harvesting my container of new potatoes for dinner....see how the potato growth has turned all brown and is decaying....

The potting soil has been used for all 3 plantings. I'm now dumping the container fulls from this last winter crop into an area where I want to create a new garden bed. It'll help create some nice soil there.

Just over 4 lbs of beautiful unblemished potatoes this time. One of these pots will produce anywhere between 4 to 6 lbs. depending on how big I let the potatoes get before I harvest them.

a winter wind storm

Every year at this time, living and gardening for me involves cleaning up big messes after big wind storms. This week has brought us 2 big wind storms with a couple of big trees down. Last night was dramatically windy. Our power went out and we felt a big thump that shook our house. We're getting quite accustomed to this in November and this morning we went out on our morning-after walk to inspect the scene after the storm. An alder was taken down by a big fir whose root also involved a few smaller firs. Luckily this was far away from any buildings or fences or gardens. It was probably this that shook the earth last night.

Here Chris and the dogs are inspecting another tree down in an old compost pile area that I'm planning to make into a new garden area for cut flower growing...now the prep will take much longer. It smushed a plastic compost bin, pails I use to collect manure in, left over fencing and rebar and a bunch of other stuff that I was temporarily storing here 'til I could find a proper home for them. A nice mess that someone with a big chainsaw will have to come help me with. Winter has arrived!

falling leaves

It's the season to collect fallen leaves and I've been raking up a storm.
In our neck of the woods, we have a lot of big leaf maple trees.
Visions of rich brown crumbly leaf mould for next year's garden are on my mind these days.

Leaf mould is simply composted deciduous tree leaves.
In my garden, I leave many of the tree and shrub leaves to decompose where they fall, just as nature intended but I also want extra leaf mould for my veggie beds.
Since I decided I wanted to make lots of it this year, I've been collecting leaves at my place from around the edges of the forest....

....and because I need more leaves than I have at my place, I'm collecting from my neighbour's yard as well. Below, we're unloading a truckful of leaves onto a tarp and will drag it to the wire enclosures where the leaves will sit and rot. After about a year, it will become a beautiful super-duper premium soil amendment that I'll add to my garden beds. An abundant renewable natural resource!

Leaf mould is not high in nutrients like garden compost. It improves the quality of the soil because it's full of beneficial organisms and earthworms love it. It also keeps the soil light and helps with water retention. I'm really looking forward to having a nice combination of homemade compost and leaf mould for my garden next year!

Below is one of my new leaf collection areas. I've hammered the rebar stakes in place and now all I have to do is fit the wire mesh around them to create the wire enclosure. Then all the leaves will get stuffed in. I've composted leaves without an enclosure which works fine too.

The beginnings of another leafy pile in a different area of the garden. Eventually I'd like to have a few of these sculptural installations placed throughout the garden so I have the lovely stuff available to spread on my beds near wherever I may be working.

When I want to use my collected leaves right away, I put a little more work into it and run over the leaves with the lawnmower. This creates a beautiful mulch of dry leaves and grass clippings that can go on my beds right away. When the leaves are shredded into smaller pieces and mixed with nitrogen rich grass clippings, they'll break down faster over the winter and will become part of the soil in the spring. The photo below shows what my shredded mulch looks like.

I think creating valuable leaf mould mulch is something every gardener might want to try. It's so simple!